


turn your face into the waves (because a pirate never cries)

by transgirluma (gayapplewhite)



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Or Shitty Parents, a lot of dead parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 04:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11268426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayapplewhite/pseuds/transgirluma
Summary: “and so he runs with uma, and listens to her promises, her plans and her stories, and she respects him, values his opinion, keeps his trust. they have been friends since childhood, and he has always known that he will never leave her, no matter what.”or; uma's relationship with each member of her crew.





	turn your face into the waves (because a pirate never cries)

**Author's Note:**

> this is for uma's day of the #d2fandomcountdown. yes i know it's sort of more about her crew, but it still counts as her because it's about every member's relationship with her (and i'm 1/2 in charge of that event, so i say it counts). the title hails from seanan mcguire's song of the pirate's daughter. please kudos and comment if you enjoy.

**dante** was nothing before uma. he knows this. she knows this. she found him in the streets. he never knew his parents, never knew which villain had sired him, never knew whose legacy he was supposed to claim and which hero he was supposed to hate. he wasn't a thief, wasn't good enough to wear their yellow, wasn't greedy enough to wear orange, wasn't enough of a whore to wear their midnight blue. so he wore red, and he learned to fight. he fought first for survival. for food and to prove himself and for the thrill. but then, she found him. she took him in, taught him how to fight proper, his fists hidden with quick moves and a proper distraction. he keeps his eyes wide, alarming, and he stares at people, hardly blinking, and then knocks them bloody. and when she watched him fight, he knew that she was proud. and in a way, he was too. she was all he had ever wanted to fight for.

 **oona** is the daughter of a siren, a woman who had entranced a human man to love her. but her mother had died when she was young, killed by her father who had never wanted a daughter; only a son. and so oona grew up alone, a maiden who longed for the ocean but could never touch it. and then she met uma, one day, on the rocks, staring into the ocean as she did. “beautiful, isn't it?” uma asked, and oona, looking at her, nodded. and then uma spent the evening, illuminated by the bruise-purple of the setting sun, telling oona of how she would take auradon for her own. oona, enthralled, would have promised her anything at that moment, and, she thinks, that she would promise her anything now.

 **niko** is the son of a sailor, a pirate bold and careful. his mother is a fisherwoman, but she raised him on stories of his father, a man brave and cunning and evil, who'd soon as slit your throat as look at you. he knows this last part is true; the thin line of a scar running across his mother's throat attests to that. he doesn't know how she survived, and he isn't sure he wants to. he meets uma one day in the market, when he's gutting fish and she's running from the vendors. she knocks the cart over, and the fish falls to the dirty streets. the fish is rotted, anyways, so losing it is not something he's particularly sad about. besides, he thinks the people of auradon have an expression “don't cry over spoilt fish,” or something like that. either way, after that, he's always watching for her, his teal-painted market girl, running through his mind, and then one day she comes for him, takes him away and makes him her own, and he never looks back.

 **jing** is born to a happy family, something as rare on the isle as a man with all his teeth. most teeth rot out, but the food is rot too so it doesn't much matter if you can chew. he has two parents, a younger sister, and another on the way, and he treasures them more than he treasures anything else in this world. at least, until one day when he comes home, and finds them all dead, splayed out on the floor, a bullet from an auradon soldier's rifle embedded in their skulls. he knows it is an auradon soldier as no one on the isle has a gun, but he does not know what his family had done to deserve this. was it that they were happy? he wonders, since he knows that no one on the isle of the lost could ever deserve happiness, but he knows that he will truly never know. he wanders the streets after that, a mournful ghost of the boy he used to be, and then uma finds him, pale in white, a ghost with a heartbeat. she takes him in, whispering promises and the one thing he's dreamed of since his family lay on the dirt floor of their home, not corpses six feet down but corpses six feet above. she offers him revenge, and he can't help but tell her yes.

 **alia** is the daughter of a seamstress, a woman who was wrongfully sent to the isle after a man accused her of sewing an outfit for gaston. she might have, her mother admits, because money is money and times are hard, but they packed her away, sent her to the isle, and the villain she'd taken the fall for would have nothing to do with her. and so alia grows up with her mother's lullabies, whispered in a soft language she can't understand. the only thing she understands is “that bastard gaston”. she will meet him and she will kill him, one day far from now when he is old and ugly and weak. she hums the lullabies to herself as she loots the market, and then she meets uma, who runs with gaston's son, gil. or; gil is one of his sons, for gaston has many, and it is then that her mother's plan changes. she whispers to alia that she will kill all of gaston's many sons, to make him hurt the way he truly deserves, and so alia joins uma, and she waits. she watches gil, and she waits, ready for her time to strike. and alia knows that when she stands above gil, her sword in his heart, that uma will forgive her, for if uma understands anything, it is the concept of revenge.

 **jesse** is born to the isle, with no parents to claim him. he does not know where his name comes from. he thinks he has always had it, that it has always been his. he makes up stories when he is young — he is the son of queen belle and king adam, taken to bargain a way off the isle, discarded when it didn't work; he is the son of a sea witch, hunted down and killed for daring the challenge the once-fearsome ursula; he is the son of a soldier, killed for doing what he must and being tossed to the isle anyway, torn apart by the people on the isle. he knows none of these are true, but they linger in the back of his mind anyway, stories blooming into hopes. but then he meets uma, and she promises him that even though he is no-man's-land shaped into a person, that he can have his revenge on those who abandoned him. in auradon, she says, he would have a home, and he would have a family, and he can take revenge on those who have kept that from him. he will take his revenge, he knows, but he has already found a family in her.

 **qian** is born to a father without a mother, a father who shaped him out of the earth and breathed life into him. his father is a sorcerer, a witch, and qian is his creation, his last magic stored in a bottle for a rainy day. he is his father's pride and joy, or at least, he is until his father tries to teach him magic, reasoning that a boy made of magic should be able to do magic on the isle regardless. but his father is wrong, and qian knows he is and will always be a disappointment. he bleeds for it, makes promises to the shadows of the dead, begging if only they will give him powers so that he may please his father, then he will do as they wish. but they only laugh and mock him, and so he cries, a river of tears big enough to drown his father so that he won't be a disappointment anymore. and when he is standing over his father's body in a rusted bath tub, uma finds him. she is electricity contained within a girl, and he can feel the magic leech off of her. she teaches him little tricks, little cantrips that are small enough that the barrier just doesn't take notice. her magic is sharp, like electricity crackling underwater, and his magic is the scent of salt-water, long and raging. and it is addicting, the feel of her magic, the promise of electricity in his spine and lungs and soul, and when he feels her magic spark in his heart, that is when he knows — he will follow her anywhere.

when they were born, they said **bei** was a girl. they are not a girl now, nor have they ever been, and nor are they a boy. it is hard for some people to understand this, but bei is a fighter, born with their fists high and raised, so those who protest will end up with a black eye and bloody nose. bei's father is the only one who understands. he knows who they are. he has always known. one day, bei's father ends up dead, bloody nose and blooming purple bruises on his cooling body, and the wall behind him graffitied. the degrading feminine words on the wall do not hurt bei as much as seeing their father dead does, and so they hunt down who has done this. they will take their revenge with blood if nothing else. and when they are done, when there is blood pooling in the cobblestones and bone splinters, sharp and white, sticking up out of the ground, a girl stands above them, teal-haired. she smiles like an angel, but she looks like no angel bei has ever seen. and she grins, wider, almost frighteningly so, and tells bei that she has never seen more impressive fighting. and so she takes bei in, because bei is wild and unafraid and has nothing to lose, and it is around uma that then bei realizes that they may have lost the only person who had ever mattered to them, but now, they have found someone else who matters more.

 **xian** is born to a bartender, a woman who took no shit from her customers but was soft and sweet with xian. she grew up in the company of drunks and the scent of booze on their breath reminds her of home. her father was a pirate, gone for years by the time xian was old enough to remember. she's heard the whispers and what they've said — her father went crazy, lost his mind. she tries to not think about it. she works as a barmaid at her mother's bar, a dive bar if there ever was one, because it looks as though it's taking a dive into the ocean xian can't touch (she thinks that might have been what drove her father crazy — he was a man who lived on the ocean and then could no longer touch it). she thinks she might follow him, some days, on the days when cleaning dirty glasses with grimy rags at her mother's bar becomes mind-numbingly dull. and then she meets a girl, a girl who smells like the ocean that xian can never touch, and it's that small detail that endears her to xian; it's that small detail that lures her in. and uma promises her the ocean, promises her the world, and xian knows that even without those promises, she would follow uma anywhere, for even the smell of the ocean is enough for her.

 **gil** is the third of his father's children, and he is muscle more than he was anything else. his father is stronger than everyone, even him, but that is alright. he has never tried to be stronger than his father, and he knows that he truly never can. and gil loves uma more than he's ever loved anything else, so he treats her the way his mother had treated his father — with adoration and love. he knows that uma will reject him eventually, because his mother had been tossed away by his father countless times, and still she kept coming back, because that is what love is. gil loves uma, this he knows, and this is why he is hers. he is strong, but he will never hurt her. he will stay in her shadow, careful, until he is needed. until he is wanted. and no matter what happens, gil knows that he will always love her.

 **harry** is the last of his father's lineage, the last hope he had for taking back victory over that bastard peter pan, but when it became apparent that harry would be as useless as his other two children (as useless as harriet, who took the brunt of his father's wrath; as useless as cj, a wild child who ran as much as she could so she would never have to come home) that it was then that his father forgot him. and so he runs with uma, and listens to her promises, her plans and her stories, and she respects him, values his opinion, keeps his trust. they have been friends since childhood, and he has always known that he will never leave her, no matter what. (she may leave him, he knows. she is somewhere between being a wild child and being one who was raised among people, and some days she is more one than the other. she may leave him, this he knows, but he has accepted it. he will not resent her when she goes). harry will never leave her. he is hers.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find the reference pics for who is who (as all the characters are based off of the background characters in the “what's my name” music video) on my blog here (http://malicebertha.tumblr.com/post/162122302147/for-reference-in-my-uma-fic-these-are-the).


End file.
